Poor image quality

[mystore]

When I upload an image for a product, the image quality becomes very poor when resized.

Is anyone else having this problem?

[mtalcott]

I don't think this is specific to AC7. I've had the same problem on some pictures with AC5.

I think it is advisable to resize the pictures using some image software, and then displaying it full size on the website.

For instance, instead of uploading a 1000px x 1000px image and letting AC resize it for a 150 x 150 thumbnail and a 400 x 400 fullsize image,
you would get better results by making a 150 x 150 version and a 400 x 400 version using your image software and uploading both of them to the server. Then select the right one for each spot and display it at full size.

This would also make your catagory pages load faster because they are loading smaller image files.

[mystore]

Thanks Marc. I just realized that if you resize the images to 640x480 and upload them, then it'll work. I guess the resizing program only works best on certain resolutions.

[AbleMods]

I had the same problem - has to do with the difference in resolution between scales.

If your image starts out at 1000x1000 and your thumbnail size in AC7 is set to 150x150, alot is going to get lost quality. I used Paintshop Pro to resize certain images before importing.

I figured out the same as the previous post, resizing my photos to the standard AC7 image size before importing helped alot. A few photos are still "fuzzy", but I think that had to do with the original photo not being a good quality.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I would be interested to know these details about your resizing experience:

Original Image Dimensions:
Image Type:
Resized Image Dimensions:
Resized Image Type:
JPG Quality (if applicable):

We worked a lot with the resizing to make it functional and useful, but it is true that a professional imaging program might be able to produce better results.

[nborelli]

It might be helpful to know what algorithm is used to to perform the resize. For example, does AbleCommerce simply do a bicubic resampling of the image? If so, it might be helpful to run some sort of unsharp filter after the resize if the source size and target size differ by a large amount. Does anyone else want to share the techniques they use?

I agree that it would be nice if the automatic resizing worked better. I am setting up the site for my wife and she doesn't even know how to resize images. I have considered creating a winforms product management program to do the image resizing, product editing, etc. This would make it easier for her to manage here extensive product list (about 300 and growing). Is anyone else working on something like that?

-Neal

[nborelli]

It would also be nice if we could write our own assembly to perform the resizes. We would need to implement an interface or set of interfaces in the assembly and then register our class and assembly to the web.config file. This would allow us to do all kinds of "smarter" resizes and we could even share some of these bits with the rest of the AbleCommerce community.

By the way, if you are looking for a free image editing program that has some great support for plug-ins, check out Paint.NET. I am not affiliated with them, I just think it is a cool program and nothing but .NET.

-Neal

[AbleMods]

Neal,

In looking at the code I've seen, it doesn't look like they're using any special to resize the image. Granted my ability to read C-Sharp is still weak, but it appears the resize code just uses the built in Asp.Net library routine.

I'm in the process of trying to develop a page that will pull up each product not assigned an image. Find an image file named with the SKU of the product, generate the 3 image sizes and populate the product record.

It won't be elegant, but it'll fix about 900 products I'm having to do manually now because the data import won't generate the sizes.

[scancelli]

There must be something wrong with the resizing algorithm. Even if you upload an image with the same dimensions as the maximum size, it will be resampled and the result is a very poor quality image.

I can send an example file if need be.

[AbleMods]

Not sure what the problem is for your images. I've used it many times and the image quality was just fine.

Most of the time I use an outside program to resize because it does it in batch mode. But several times I've uploaded just one file and the resize to standard sizes feature didn't change the quality.

[streetlightzjon]

I seem to be having the same issue.

All images were taken with Nikon D40x (10mega pixel)

Resized in Photo Shop CS3 (cropped down to 640x480)

Out of the hundreds of products oddly a couple are clear the rest are blurry.

*Sample*
The "Dip Stick" images is clear the rest are blurry.

http://www.streetlightz.com/Category.aspx?CategoryId=68

The bosses are on my case to get this fixed (and I dont blame them)

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[AbleMods]

Your images aren't resized to a consistent size. Was that intentional?

The dipsticks image is 350 x 262

But the engine block is 271 x 350

You said you're resizing and cropping the image to 640 x 480 in Photoshop.

The sequence of events is important - are you cropping first and then resizing?

Then the question is why aren't you resizing (in Paintshop) down to the store native size i.e. 350x262? Have Paintshop take the image all the way down to the size you've specified for your images inside the AC7 store setup.

[streetlightzjon]

I was doing allot of various sizes and uploading to try to figure it out. (Im new to this site building stuff)

I think I have figured it out. If I resize them to 350x234 upload it and then use the same image file as the "more images" and set the size to 350x243 they come up crisp and clear.

Then I can use my higher res images as a 2nd/3rd image.

A bit time consuming but results are much better then whats up now. And lets face it. Image is EVERYTHING

[AbleMods]

Image truly is everything.

Within AC7, there are default image size values you can specify. When you upload an image, AC7 will resize down to that size if the uploaded image is bigger.

But if you just resize the image BEFORE uploading it, and resize it to match that default AC7 image size, AC7 won't resize it when you upload. Generally the Thumbnail and Icon resizing quality isn't so much an issue because they're so small, so the real issue just becomes the main Image size.

When I upload images, I use a batch resizer that makes all the images the same size. That size is exactly the size specified in AC7 for the Image picture.

You can also just name your image files the same as the product SKU's, you don't even have to upload them one at a time. Just copy all the images (properly named of course) into the ~/Assets/ProductImages folder and AC7 will detect them automatically if the checkbox is checked in the Admin setup screen.